Word
Kahvi maksaa kaksi euroa ja viisikymmentä senttiä.
Meaning
The coffee costs two euros and fifty cents.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of Kahvi maksaa kaksi euroa ja viisikymmentä senttiä.
ja
and
maksaa
to cost
kaksi
two
kahvi
coffee
Questions & Answers about Kahvi maksaa kaksi euroa ja viisikymmentä senttiä.
Why do the words for euro and cent end in -a and -ä (euroa, senttiä)?
In Finnish, whenever you use a number greater than one, the noun that follows it must be in the partitive form. Since we have kaksi (two) and viisikymmentä (fifty), euro becomes euroa and sentti becomes senttiä.
Why does euroa end in -a but senttiä ends in -ä?
This is due to vowel harmony. The word euro contains the back vowels u and o, so it takes the back-vowel ending -a. The word sentti only has the neutral vowels e and i, which means it takes the front-vowel ending -ä.
I learned that maksaa means to pay. Why is it translated as costs here?
The verb maksaa is used for both to pay and to cost. You can tell which one it means from the context. Since the subject is a thing like kahvi (coffee), it costs money, whereas a person would pay money.
How is the word viisikymmentä formed?
It is made of two parts: viisi (five) and kymmentä (the partitive form of ten). In Finnish, multiples of ten are formed by saying the number followed by tens, so fifty is literally five tens.